'Inventor of email' Ray Tomlinson dies

Ray Tomlinson, who created computer-to-computer electronic mail and selected the accompanying '@' symbol, has died aged 74.

Tomlinson was widely credited with inventing the earliest form of email, on an Internet precursor called ARPAnet.

Advertisement

Electronic mail could only be sent to people using the same computer before Tomlinson decided to implement the '@' symbol, which would separate a username from the name of the machine they were using -- meaning mail could be sent across the network.

Thank you, Ray Tomlinson, for inventing email and putting the @ sign on the map. #RIP

Read next

Internet eggcorns are messing up how we all communicate

ByAbigail Beall

Tomlinson told WIRED US in 2012 that he chose the symbol because it "couldn't be confused with a username". "If every person had an '@' sign in their name, it wouldn't work so well," he said in an interview. "But they didn't. They did use commas and slashes and brackets. Of the remaining three or four characters, the '@' sign made the most sense. It denoted where the user was... at. Excuse my English" "It was the only preposition on the keyboard."

Tomlinson sent the first email in 1971, but since claimed that he "couldn't remember" what it said.

Advertisement

"I sent a number of test messages to myself from one machine to the other," he wrote. "The test messages were entirely forgettable and I have, therefore, forgotten them," "Most likely the first message was QWERTYUIOP or something."

The Internet Hall of Fame described Tomlinson's contributions as "a complete revolution". "He fundamentally changed the way people communicate, including the way businesses, from huge corporations to tiny mom-and-pop shops, operate and the way millions of people shop, bank, and keep in touch with friends and family, whether they are across town or across oceans," it wrote. "Today, tens of millions of email-enabled devices are in use every day. Email remains the most popular application, with over a billion and a half users spanning the globe and communicating across the traditional barriers of time and space."

When asked why he decided to create email, he wrote "because it seemed like a neat idea".